


The Creature from the Red Lagoon

by SheliakBob



Category: Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 06:10:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20577776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheliakBob/pseuds/SheliakBob
Summary: In a future descended from the classic films of the Fifties, humans explore the Red Planet with a unique "Biological Asset" to assist them. There they encounter terrifying monsters, indigenous horrors willing to feed on the hot blood of Earthlings!





	The Creature from the Red Lagoon

THE CREATURE FROM THE RED LAGOON

Waters were flowing on Mars again.  
Atomic furnaces had been blasting away at the polar ice caps for many years to make the atmosphere thicker and the rivers full. Water, deep and clear and fresh, filled the chasmas. A thin shallow sea was forming in the Northern Hemisphere. Not much more than ankle deep now, but waves were once again lapping at red sand beaches.  
Doctor Joseph Ferguson, son of Professor Clete Ferguson and Helen Dobson, stood on the plastic bow of the Mariner 17 hydro-explorer staring at the sheer red cliffs of the Tithonium Chasma, a great long canyon that was part of the Valles Marineris rift that loomed ahead. Mostly brick red stone, but with marbled layers of dark chocolate brown igneous rock toward the bottoms. The water ran like a slick of glass between the walls of the canyon.   
He stroked a salt and pepper beard thoughtfully.  
“This is as good a place as any.” He muttered, mostly to himself.  
The air was high altitude thin, but Ferguson had been raised high in the Rocky Mountains, far from any bodies of water, and he was comfortable without a breathing mask. He sucked down a lungful of pure oxy from a tube every once in a while, but otherwise felt relatively at home in the open Martian air.  
“What did you say?” asked Captain Hector Lucas, the nominal commander of the survey mission. His voice was muffled by a pressurizing rebreather.   
“I was just thinking that this is as good a time as any to deploy the biological asset.”  
Ferguson indicated a large silver cryocapsule lashed to the deck. He pointed with his thumb, a peculiar mannerism he’d picked up somewhere.  
“Oh! Are we finally going to find out what flavor of corpsesicle we’ve got?”   
The blonde meteorologist giggled. It was cute, annoying, and disconcerting all at the same time. The woman had a doctorate and a pixyish face that never seemed to go together. She wore a white full body environment suit, mostly for warmth, that she somehow managed to make look like a swimsuit. It was the curves, mostly. An inflatable clear bubble helm covered her head. She kept bumping it with her hand trying to brush her bangs back, out of habit.  
“Still don’t see what we need with a biological asset in the first place.” Grufffed Tanner, the hydrologist.   
“We’ll get better data from the drones than any damn seal or dolphin will give us.”  
Dr. Ferguson favored him with a tight little smile.  
“The asset is not a seal. Or a dolphin.” He said softly. He stroked his beard again. He’d grown it out mostly for warmth. He still wasn’t used to it.  
“Ooh! Mysterious! I can’t wait to see what it really is!” The pixy again.  
Ferguson sighed.  
He’d been anticipating this moment for weeks now, but the reality of the event caused his heart to race. His hands shook, actually shook, as he punched in the thaw sequence codes on the cryocapsule’s control panel.  
“Wow!” Shouted Dr. Corbin from the crew cabin. “Joe’s pulse just went Calypso-wild! Is Gale doing her stretchercises again?”  
The blonde giggled and blushed. She cast an appraising look at Doctor Ferguson, who was undeniably handsome in a rugged, weathered mature man kind of way.  
Ferguson frowned but said nothing. He was watching the temperature gauges on the cryocapsule.   
“Everybody stand back. This egg is about to hatch.”  
There was a beep followed by a long warning tone. The capsule cracked open spitting plumes of swirling white mist. A servo-motor whined and the capsule’s hatch swung open, creaking like a rusty door.  
A large shape stumbled out of the fog of evaporating coolant. It was over seven feet tall, shaped roughly like a man. Thick bands of rubbery scales encircled its torso like armor. Huge catcher’s mitt hands covered its face. As it lurched forward finned feet slapped on the deck.  
“Fuck me.” Whispered Captain Lucas.  
Gale Barton screamed and fainted dead away.  
Ferguson raised an electronic remote toward the Creature and waited.   
After a few seconds the Gill Man lowered its hands, blinked slowly, then bellowed at the humans. It was a deep throated chest rumble of a roar, followed by a series of pops and clicks as its gills gaped open.  
Ferguson hit the red button.  
Blue sparks hissed and crackled from wires set in tight against the lacey gills on the Creature’s neck, right against the sensitive skin of the gill slits themselves. It clutched its throat and spasmed before collapsing on the deck, denting the plastic with its weight.  
“Dive!” shouted Ferguson, brandishing the remote again.  
The Creature flinched but recognized the command as one it had been trained to obey.  
Crawling on hands and knees, the Creature made its way to the edge of the deck and slid over into the icy waters. It hissed unhappily at the coldness of the meltwater, but ducked under the surface after a few seconds and began to swim ahead of the survey module.   
“Fuck me.” Repeated Captain Lucas, flipping down his sun-visor to follow the Gill Man’s progress as it swam away.  
“Hey! Gale’s unconscious!” Said Dr. Corbin as he waddled out onto the deck. He wore an Arctic grade parka but didn’t use a breather. The lighter gravity of Mars made his morbidly obese form surprisingly agile. “What happened?”  
He went to the slumped blonde’s side and began to slap her wrists and deflated her bubble helm to lift her eyelids. He examined her bright blue eyes with what seemed like more than merely professional interest.  
“What happened out here?”  
Dr. Ferguson pointed to the dark shape skimming just beneath the water’s surface, riding the bow like a porpoise.   
“I woke up the asset.”  
Corbin grunted.  
“Well, I better wake up the blonde.” He said, cracking open a tube of smelling salts.  
Gale sat up with a scream, fingers crammed against her lips.

Hours of watching the monitors made Joe’s eyes dry and itchy. The Creature swam tirelessly ahead. Bead cameras affixed to its brow and scalp fed back to Ferguson’s screens.  
The whole crew could see everything the Creature saw, displayed on the full size cabin screens. Ferguson tracked it on his control pad screen, which scrolled constant updates on the Creature’s heart rate, oxygen consumption and neural activity. The spectacle on the cabin screens seemed to exert a hypnotic fascination on the crew. None of them stayed for long, usually only an hour or two, but every member of the crew came by to spend a shift sitting on Mylar cushions on the floor, staring at the rippling sweep of the Creature’s progress. They sat open mouthed, crouched or leaning forward, hugging knees mesmerized by the watery vistas revealed.   
Only Ferguson spent all his waking hours at the screen. He was as fascinated as the others, but was growing brain-numb. The view was usually the same. Crystal clear water and lots of red sand. Jumbled boulders in piles beneath the vertical canyon walls. In shallower patches, bywaters where the current grew sluggish, there were microbial mats in rusty red and slick-looking green-black. These were not indigenous life but grew from contaminants carried to Mars from Earth.  
Joe remembered watching news footage of the early unmanned probes. A Soviet lander flew to pieces on jets of exploding fuel high in the Martian sky. Orbiters caught the spectacle on their cameras.  
“Well,” his father remarked grimly, “if there wasn’t life on Mars before, there is now.”  
The Soviets never sterilized the inside of their probes.   
Terran bacteria and fungus spores and viruses rained on the virgin Martian sands below, like microscopic paratroopers invading the red planet.  
None of that mattered now.  
With the decision to colonize Mars the assumption was made that biota from Earth would soon come to dominate the Red Planet. No one much cared for the fragile Martian ecology, even when they discovered that there was such a thing. Mankind needed the space, the resources, and the challenges represented by Mars. All other considerations weren’t even secondary to the corporations underwriting the Great Martian Venture.  
The Creature’s cams did reveal indigenous life. Wiggling worm things and tadpole-like swimmers the largest of which was thumb sized floated by. There were odd little crustacean things that came boiling up out of the sands like brine shrimp revived by the flowing water.  
The star of the show was a meter long flat, undulating thing that looked like a cross between a starfish and a stingray.  
A new species!  
Mason, the other biologist on the crew shouted with excitement and claimed three hour of footage of the starray swimming for further study.  
He insisted on naming the new species after Gale, under the mistaken impression that it would improve his chances with the curvaceous blonde.  
Joe pitied him.  
Mason was young and easily excited.  
Joe knew that there were far more dramatic lifeforms on Mars, but he was under orders not to share that knowledge with the others.  
If they knew what was lurking in the trackless red deserts they would scream and climb over each other to crawl back into the escape rockets for the flight home.  
Ferguson chewed his lip and cast wary glances at the jagged tops of the chasma’s cliffs. He was uncomfortably certain that something was staring back at him. Something cold and hungry.

The wind howled in thin gusts down the narrow canyon. Red dust fell like snow, coating everything with a thin crimson film. The crew huddled together inside the cylindrical cabin of the floating module. Choppy clear waves slapped against the pontoons and the plastic hull like glass hands smacking the boat.  
Everyone sat around the monitors watching the Creature as it explored the untroubled bottom. Light rippled down from the tossing surface but below the water the current flowed slow and steady as it always did.  
“Hey! Look at that!” Captain Lucas shouted pointing at one of the screens. “That looks like ruins of some kind!”  
On the monitors smooth red blocks came swimming into view.   
“Those look like steps!” Gale said pointing at another screen.  
“Right angles! Right angles!” chanted Mason nonsensically.   
Huge stone cubes, some piled atop one another in intriguing shapes. Corners and edges and long straight planes.  
“That looks like some kind of statuary!” Gale shouted, pointing at an oddly shaped stone form that jutted out of a jumble of square blocks. She jumped up and pounded on the screen with her finger.  
“Right THERE! Those have got to be eyes!”  
Ferguson fidgeted uncomfortably.  
“They’re not ruins.” He said loudly to cut through the clamor.  
“Those are just naturally occurring fractures in sedimentary rocks. Sandstone laid down in sheets, they crack and split along the planes. We see that sort of thing all over Mars. Those are just square rocks.”  
Ferguson spoke as authoritatively as possible. The others seemed unconvinced.  
MacPherson, the geologist looked like he was going to say something. He was frowning.  
Ferguson adjusted the controls on his hand set and sent the Creature a sonic signal that would direct its attention elsewhere.  
The curious square stones slid out of view.  
There was grumbling and whispering.  
Joe ignored it.

The winds, thing but fierce, continued to howl. The hydro-module with its plastic hull and inflatable pontoons was spun about and slammed repeatedly into the sheer cliff walls.  
“We’ve got to get out of this main channel. The winds are going to crack us up or capsize us for sure. Look for a side canyon or a backwater, some place where we can get something between us and the wind.”  
Captain Lucas sat in the pilot chair slamming and tugging on the control stick as he had been for hours now. He murmured at the control panel trying to coax some real thrust out of the light-weight electric motor.  
From the way he was cussing, he wasn’t having much luck.  
“Hard fuck coming!” he shouted, leaning his whole body into the stick and slamming the control panel with his free hand.  
Seconds later there was a shudder and a hard impact that shook the whole module. Gear secured in web-netting along the curved walls rattled like chattering teeth. Loose items flew about, sliding all against one wall, then sloshing and rolling and tumbling back the other way, as if carried by invisible surf.  
There was a brittle crack and a long black line appeared in one curved wall.  
“Another like that and we’ll be testing the flotation devices!” Mason shouted nervously.  
“The fuck me, get ready to swim boys!” Lucas replied through gritted teeth.  
“I can’t swim.” Dr. Corbin said sadly. “Not really.”  
Gale laughed hysterically.  
Ferguson clenched his teeth and scanned through the live feeds from the Creature’s cams.  
“Looks like something coming up to starboard. About three hundred meters. Narrow mouth but it looks like a deep channel veering south. Lot of rocks but I think we can make it.”  
“Hold on to your hats and turn on your oxy, we’re gonna run for it!”  
Lucas kissed the St. Rita medal he wore and grabbed the stick with both hands.   
“C’mon baby, give me all the juice you’ve got!”  
The electric motor whined like an angry lawnmower.  
“Lean right, you bastards or get ready to get wet!”  
Everyone did as they were told.  
There was another impact. Loose objects sloshed forward and aft. There was a loud hiss, a bang like a cannon going off. One of the pontoons had burst like a balloon. The whole cabin canted hard right.  
“That was the starboard pontoon.” Shouted Lucas.  
The floor slanted steeply.  
The loose items slid again, this time all piling up against the starboard wall and staying there.  
Suddenly the shuddering and vibration of wind against the hull stopped dead. The module wallowed forward on a whining motor, leaning like a drunk.  
Lucas looked out through the clear viewport in front of him. The view was clouded by a red smear of dust. Thin drifts of white mist rippled past. The path ahead was barely wider than the survey module, rocks leaned precariously over stagnant but deep water.  
“I think we’re going to be okay.” He said after a while.  
He kissed St. Rita with some real passion.  
“Someone will have to go out and see if the pontoon can be repaired.” He said tiredly. “I’m taking a nap.”  
Without another word he climbed out of the pilot’s chair, slid down the slanted floor and threw himself into his hammock.   
The crew looked at each other and shrugged.  
Lucas was already snoring.

“Looks ugly, but some duct tape and polymer sealant and it should be fine.” Said MacPherson, who was dressed in a thermal insulation suit and treading water next to the survey module.  
The water was ice cold and surprisingly deep.  
Ferguson nodded, staring at his screen. The Creature cams showed MacPherson’s swim-finned feet swaying from below.  
Joe didn’t mention this to the swimming geologist. He was sure that the Creature was just curious but he didn’t want to spook his nervous crewmate. Mostly because he didn’t want to take MacPherson’s place in the water.  
He was pretty sure the Creature was just curious. Not certain.  
Weird wind-sculpted rocks twisted and leaned above them, casting deep shadows across the surface of the water.  
“I don’t like this.” Ferguson whispered.  
“What?” asked Dr. Corbin, who was holding on to the edge of the cabin hatch for dear life.  
“I don’t know. I’ve just got a bad feeling. We should get out of here as soon as possible.”  
Corbin looked around with scared eyes.  
He didn’t know what Ferguson knew about the indigenous Martian life, so he didn’t know to look for what Joe prayed none of them would see.  
The wind whistling through rock spires overhead shrieked mournfully, like emaciated Martian Sirens wailing their songs to the doomed.  
“I really think we should get out of here as soon as possible.”  
Catching just a snatch of what Ferguson said, MacPherson snorted derisively.  
“We’re not going anywhere for a few hours at least.” He said. “It’ll take half an hour or more to finish patching the rip in the pontoon. Another hour or two for the sealant to dry. Then the compressors will have to reinflate it. That’ll take a couple more hours. We’re going to be here for a while.”  
“I just hope we’re alone.” Muttered Joe.  
“What?” asked MacPherson.  
“Nothing.”  
Corbin was close enough to hear what Joe said. The Doctor stared at him with frank dread. But he didn’t ask the question that was so obviously on his lips.

Hours later the module was mostly upright. There was still a slight slant to the floor. Anything round rolled crazily about for a few seconds before fetching up against the starboard wall.  
“We still have a slow leak in the pontoon.” Lucas said, frowning.  
“You want me to go back out and try another patch job?” Mason asked reluctantly.  
“Don’t think it’s that serious.” Lucas said after a few seconds. ‘Once we get back to the main channel we’re only a day or two away from the take-out point. The crane-tractor is probably already there. Don’t want to make the recovery team wait too long. They’re liable to write us off as ‘lost’ once the company refuses to authorize overtime pay.”  
There was a chuckle among the crew, even though they knew it wasn’t entirely out of the question that such a thing could happen.  
“We may come in wallowing, but we’ll get there. We’ve just got to get back in the channel.”  
Getting back to the channel proved to be more complicated than it would seem, however. The current in this little side stream was too sluggish to push the module at any perceptible speed. The electric motor was weak enough when going forward, the reverse gear was positively feeble. With the top-sided buoyancy of the module, it probably wouldn’t be able to drag them back against wind resistance as long as the storm continued.  
Eventually Ferguson suggested sending the Gill-Man ahead to see if the narrow canyon widened enough to allow them to turn the module around.  
Sent ahead to scout, the Creature poked through countless dead end streams and explored every cleft in the rock it came across. It disappeared into an underwater cavern for nearly an hour, which caused a near panic among the crew since the remote cam signals couldn’t pierce the surrounding rock and they lost contact for most of that time.  
Eventually the Creature cams showed the Gill-Man skimming over a wide sand bar and into a broad open lagoon. The water wasn’t more than two or three meters deep, but the lagoon was wide, a hundred meters or more across at least. More than enough room to turn the Mariner 17 around.  
The crew cheered.  
“Well, the fish-guy came through!” said Lucas, rubbing his thinning hair. “I have to admit, the creepy thing sure has earned its keep.”  
Joe laughed.  
He never doubted how valuable the Biological Asset would be. His parents, in their time, knew more about the Gill-Man than anyone else alive. Joe knew more about the Creature than his parents ever did.  
The strange Devonian living fossil was the most adaptable organism Science had ever discovered. It could go from aquatic to terrestrial and back again as needed. It was equally at home in salt or fresh water. It was intelligent, no one could say for certain how intelligent, but Joe suspected that it was at least as smart as a man, and infinitely more cunning. It was immune to every known pathogen and adapted quickly to toxins. It could go into long periods of dormancy as its body adjusted to shock or trauma.  
Joe believed that the Creature might well be the most advanced and versatile organism that had ever evolved on Earth. He suspected that it or its kind would still be there long after his own species had run its course and brought about its own extinction.  
Joe both admired and respected the Gill-Man. Which meant that he was more afraid of it than anyone else. He knew what it could do, how important it was to give the thing as much freedom as it needed, but nowhere near as much as it wanted.  
The lagoon it had discovered was about a kilometer and a half upstream, so Lucas slammed the toggles to full and pushed the stick ahead.

If Joe had any idea what they were about to see, he would volunteer to jump overboard and help the Creature push the module back to the channel by hand.  
“What the holy fuck Is that?” whispered Lucas, slapping another micropatch on his neck for clarity.   
“Don’t try to tell us that’s just striated fractures in the rocks!” Mason smirked.  
“It’s so old!” MacPherson gasped. “Look at the weathering! That’s hundreds of thousands of years, maybe millions, worth of wind wear.”  
The lagoon proved to be half cavern with undercut scarps hanging far out over the water. A small round hole overhead showed naked salmon-colored sky. It was a grotto, probably carved out countless eons ago when the Martian waters had flowed naturally.  
In the shadows of the overhanging rock were stone buildings, blocks of stone carved and fitted and stacked into roofless squares. Odd diamond-shaped windows pierced the thick walls. Broad steps in an ascending triangle rose out of the lapping water to the base of something that could only be called a pyramid. Stone spheres dotted the bank. Some blank, weathered stone, some with carved faces rendered skull-like and vague by the scouring winds.  
“That’s a fucking pyramid.” Lucas whispered.  
Everyone turned accusing stares at Joe.  
“We have to get out of here!” he said very carefully. “We have to leave here and forget what we have seen. Nothing good can come of this.”  
Lucas’ mouth dropped open.  
“Are you insane?” he asked harshly. “We came to Mars to EXPLORE, and you want us to forget the greatest discovery in human history? Proof of an alien civilization!”  
Joe flushed an angry red.  
He counted to ten, then continued to speak as clearly and carefully and evenly as he could manage.   
“There is nothing new about this ‘discovery’. Colonial Command has known about places like this since the Seventies, since the first Mars landing missions. There are things you don’t know about this planet. Things that no one must ever know. Let us just turn the Mariner around and head for the take-out point. Don’t say anything about this place. There will be generous bonuses for everyone who never speaks about this again, you’ll see.”  
Shocked, disbelieving faces stared back at him.  
“I’m an explorer. I’m here to explore. Not to hide things the fat cats don’t want people to know about!”  
“We’re ALL scientists!” Mason broke in. He looked to Gale for support and she nodded slightly.  
Oh Christ, Joe thought, feeling his stomach sink.  
“It is our JOB to discover, to analyze, to record and preserve what we find for all other scientists to study. There is nothing that could convince me not to investigate those ruins. I’ve waited all my life for this moment.”   
Joe gritted his teeth.  
“It will be the last moment of your life if you don’t listen to me!” Joe pleaded. “This isn’t some arbitrary decision made by out of touch bureaucrats. Command knows that there was, that there still IS Life on Mars. There are savage, dangerous things here, things that Colonial Command works very hard to keep us safe from. I can’t explain it better than that. I’m under orders not to.”  
Captain Lucas snorted and turned away.   
“Get the inflatable launch ready. We’re going to go look over those ruins.”  
Mason and MacPherson jumped to obey.  
“No!” Joe shouted. “I order you not to do that. Under authority granted to me by Directive Twenty Three, Section Four, I am over-riding all other orders and directing you to turn this hydro-survey module around and head directly to the take-out point. Anyone who does not obey these orders will have all outstanding pay confiscated, all Colonial privileges revoked, and will be cashiered from their positions with Colonial Command Survey Operations.”  
Joe stopped to draw breath.  
His hands were shaking.  
“What the Hell are you blathering about, Ferguson? I’m Commander of this mission. How do you get off ordering ME around?”  
Joe sighed.  
“There is a sealed packet in your command briefing folder. It has a red 23 on it. Break the seal and rad the orders inside. You will find that they grant me, as Biological Asset Overseer and Biosecurity Officer the authority to take over command in situations like this one.”  
He had to sit down.  
Lucas frowned, fished his command pouch out from under the pilot chair. He opened it and fished around for a few seconds. He seemed surprised when he found a silver packet with a red 23 on the cover with the directive “Do Not Open Unless Directive Twenty Three Protocol has been invoked.”  
Lucas tore open the packet, took out the flimsy plastisheet inside and read the very brief, very cryptic instructions.  
At the end he crumpled the sheet, wasted effort since it would immediately spring back into its original shape, and dropped it on the deck.  
“They can keep the money and fire me if they want. I’m investigating those ruins. I’ll make more money and do more good lecturing when I get home than the Company or Command would ever give me anyway! Who’s with me?”  
All of the idiots raised their hands and cheered.  
Joe ground fists into his eyes and stroked his beard.  
“You’re all damned fools.” He whispered sadly.

In the end Joe succeeded in talking Dr. Corbin into staying on the Mariner 17 while the others piled into the inflatable launch.  
“If something happens, and I assure you something is going to happen, it makes more sense for you to stay with the module, where you can treat the others without risking injury yourself. What happens if our only doctor is disabled and someone needs field surgery?”  
“Field surgery?” Corbin gulped.  
“Oh, yes. Reattaching limbs, sticking entrails back in bellies. Closing up sucking chest wounds. All of which are pretty likely.”  
“Likely?”  
“Oh yeah. Almost certain. There’s a reason why those idiots should have listened to me.”  
“Perhaps it would be most prudent if I remained here. To handle any emergencies.”  
“Most prudent!” Joe agreed amiably.   
The two of them watched as the overloaded launch sputtered toward the ruins. If the Mariner 17’s electric motor sounded like a lawnmower, the smaller model on the launched whined like an angry weed-eater. The launch was almost bent double with the weight it carried. Water sloshed over the balloon-roll sides.  
The noise seemed to echo endlessly, amplified by the concave Cliffside.  
Joe grimaced.  
Too loud! He thought. Too damn loud. THEY will hear it for sure.   
Finally the launch hit the lowest step of the staircase that rose out of the water. The rubber bow flexed, then was pushed up and over by the spitting motor.  
Lucas jumped out first, laser pistol in hand.  
Joe winced.  
Laser pistol.  
The sidearms that the Company gave them were barely more than glorified flashlights. They would burn a patch of skin, alright, but little more. Colonial Command didn’t want their explorers and settlers going Wild West on the new frontier.  
The laser pistols were supposed to be deterrents. Painful as hell, but a person would have to work hard to actually kill somebody with one battery’s charge. Or three.  
After looking around, his excited expression evident through the bubble helm, Lucas gestured for the others to follow and started toward the top of the steps.  
“Idiot.” Muttered Joe.  
He glanced down at his control pad. The Gill-Man was crouched on submerged stairs of the ruin, almost directly beneath the launch. The rounded lumps of butts on the rubber bottom were clearly visible. Gale’s was identifiable by its superbly rounded shape. The Gill-Man seemed to be fascinated by it.   
The Creature could have reached up and tickled it with his claws.  
One by one the survey crew clambered out of the launch, with a great deal of wobbling and tilting.  
They hurried up the staircase and began wandering around the ruins. They were snapping pictures and touching engraved surfaces with gloved hands.  
Mason stood at the bottom of the half-crumbled pyramid, arms outstretched, and whooped like a school kid on an outing.  
“Idiot.” Joe said, rubbing his eyes.  
He was the only one not wearing one of the ridiculous inflatable bubble helms.  
It wasn’t long before the first predator showed up. Joe saw it before any of the landing party. He was the only one looking for it, the only one who would know what it was when he saw it.  
The thing stepped out of shadows, moving in a crouch, stalking toward MacPherson, who was on his knees recording some markings on a stone that he was convinced were writing of some kind.  
The Martian had a face like a skull covered with scales. Deep sunken eyes that just looked like black pits from a distance. Mouth full of needle-like fangs. Nostrils that were two flaring holes in the middle of its face. Its thick, fat tongue was pushed out of the fanged mouth, tasting the air, tasting the flavor of prey.  
“Mac!” Joe shouted over his comm link. “Right behind you, look out!”  
MacPherson sat up abruptly and held a hand by his ear. His head tilted inside the helm, then he shook his head. Something was wrong with his earpiece.  
“God damn it, Mac! Get out of there!” Joe almost wept with frustration.  
Before the geologist could do anything, the Martian lunged toward him. It seized one arm with its huge thick-fingered taloned and yanked the limb right out of its socket. The fabric of the environment suit didn’t tear as easily as skin and flesh had. The monster yanked and tugged at the arm, twisting it, trying to tear the meat free from the clinging space suit.  
MacPherson screamed shrilly over the comms.  
Bright red blood splashed out of his mouth and across the inside of the helm.  
The Martian clubbed him to the ground and planted a splay-toed foot on his chest. Stepping down hard enough to crush ribs, the monster used its improved leverage to tear the arm and sleeve clear of the suit holding them.  
It held the bloody end to its mouth and sucked every drop of blood out of the severed arm. Its eyes widened enough for glinting pupils to be seen inside the deep sockets. Hungrily it lunged down, planting its mouth over the blood-spurting shoulder stump. The slurping, sucking sounds it made were not audible as far away as the hydro-module, but were all too easy to imagine.  
Captain Lucas shouted angrily, leveled his laser pistol, and fired. The pencil-thin red beam struck the Martian on the back, raising a thin streamer of greasy black smoke.  
The monster didn’t even notice. It grabbed both sides of MacPherson’s chest and held him up, compressing the torso like a giant squeeze bottle.  
The geologist stopped screaming.  
Only a gurgling, sobbing sound carried over the comms, followed soon by a rattle.  
Lucas stalked angrily nearer, still firing the ludicrously useless laser beam.  
“Get out of there, all of you!” Joe screamed at the landing party.  
The Captain’s pistol flickered and went dead. A battery depleted light winked on. Lucas stared at his worthless pistol, finally realizing how worthless it truly was.  
There was a quarter-sized black charred spot on the Martian’s scaled back. The monster showed no sign of discomfort.  
It turned, tossing aside the shriveled corpse of MacPherson and seemed to notice Lucas for the first time.  
Its eyes widened and its mouth gaped hungrily. Blood and drool dripped from its fangs.  
The eight foot tall gorilla-like monster lunged at Lucas, moving with distressing speed and agility.  
Lucas punched it in the face as hard as he could.  
Surprisingly, the monster seemed to actually feel that. It stopped dead in its tracks and stared down at Lucas, mouth open in a surprised gape.  
Then it tilted its head. Its whole body shivered for a second.  
Heartened, Lucas began throwing punches at the Martian.  
“No, you fool!” Ferguson shouted. “It’s laughing at you! Good Lord, it’s actually laughing.”  
Lucas didn’t seem to hear.  
He was surprised when the Martian’s clawed hands slapped both sides of his head, popping the bubble helm like a balloon. The talons gripped the Captain’s head. With a jerk it yanked Lucas’ head clean off his shoulders.  
The Martian tossed the severed head aside and fastened its mouth on the geysering neck.   
Victim and slayer sunk to the ground together in a kind of unholy embrace.  
While Mason and Gale were staring in horror, another Martian stalked stealthily toward them, sliding over stones the same red-brown as its skin. Ferguson did not see it until it stood to attack. He could see other rippling, moving patches among the ruins and looming shadows behind those.  
“Dear God, there’s a whole pack of the things!” He shouted. “Get out of there, get back to the launch!”  
Dr. Corbin, with unimaginable calm, clicked on his comm and in a very steady, very serious voice said, “Landing Party, Corbin here. Urgently advise withdrawal.”  
After speaking, the Doctor looked toward Ferguson with an idiotic “everything’s going to be alright now” smile.  
Mason and Gale looked around.  
Joe could see the girl scream inside her bubble helm. She must have turned her comm off at some point, maybe to cut off the horrible screams MacPherson had made, since he heard only a faint shrill echo of the scream as it wafted across the water between them.  
Mason pushed her, shouting, “Go! Go! Run!”   
His mic was on. His panicked voice hammered Joe’s ears until Ferguson turned down the gain.  
The two of them began running down the stairs toward the water and their inflatable launch, which was pulled up on the first couple of steps. It looked disturbingly like a discarded condom, flaccid and draped over the stones.  
The Martians stalked nearer, splayed feet slapping on the stones, deep chested growls rumbling through their bared fangs. Taloned hands reached and swiped at the fleeing humans, despite being well out of reach.  
“Go! Go! Go!” Mason kept screaming, pushing on Gale’s shoulder.  
Almost inevitably, whether from Mason’s pushing or because she ran with her head turned staring back at the monsters creeping toward them, Gale stumbled on the edge of a step, her ankle twisted.  
Joe could hear the brittle crack from the module as her ankle broke.  
“Dear God!” Corbin whispered. “They’re all going to die.”  
Joe resisted the urge to say “I told you so.” Instead he looked down at the control pad in his hands.  
He smiled grimly.  
“Not if I can help it.” He said, punching a series of commands into the keypad.  
Mason, in a moment of ill-conceived gallantry, unslung the rock hammer from his equipment belt. He brandished the flimsy tool like a weapon and stood between Gale and the oncoming Martian horrors.  
“No! You idiot!” shouted Corbin. “Run, just run! You can do nothing now. Nothing but die.”  
Mason heard the Doctor over the link. He glanced back, smiled sadly, and tossed a jaunty salute back at them. Then he shook his little hammer, shouted like a mad Viking, and charged at the oncoming monsters.  
His brave but foolhardy sacrifice bought maybe a second or two.  
The nearest monstrosity slashed at the biologist, talons ripping his chest open down to the bone.  
A slap from the other hand sent the mortally wounded man flying out of the way. He collapsed in a bleeding, weeping heap on the stones.  
Two other Martian monsters shuffled to him and began a vicious game of tug of war with his still kicking body. Pieces were ripped off. Mason’s torso was torn in half. The two monsters began fighting each other for the tasty bits that fell out.  
Mason’s sacrifice, and the seconds he bought so dearly, were enough for Joe to hit the enter button.  
“I’m really sorry about this, Big Guy. I genuinely am.”  
The Gill-Man erupted out of the water, bellowing fiercely. It clawed at its neck as blue sparks crawled across the wires embedded there. Goaded by searing electrical pain, the Creature lumbered forward with claws brandished.  
The Martian stalking down the steps toward the woman sprawled below froze in place. It tilted its head before squaring its broad shoulders and letting out a bellow of its own.  
The Gill-Man stamped up the steps, water dripping off his thickly scaled body, finned feet slapping on stones that hadn’t tasted water in a million years.  
The two inhuman creatures collided in a terrible flurry of slashing claws and snapping mouths.   
The Martian’s thick talons scraped across the Creature’s banded scales, leaving deep gouges that seeped blood so darkly red that it looked black.  
The Gill-Man’s claws slashed long diagonal lacerations across the Martian’s brick-red pebbled hide. Something wet glistened in the wounds, but not a drop spilled out. It was build, evolved over millions of years in Mar’s parched environment, not to lose fluid.   
Its syrupy blood congealed immediately upon contact with the air.  
The two huge monsters grappled like sparring wrestlers, locked claws and butted heads like dueling bulls.  
Gale screamed and crawled weekly toward the launch.  
The other Martians froze in place, staring raptly at the struggle between one of their own and an Alien Monster from Earth.  
The Martian was bigger, bulkier, with muscles that could bend or rip steel. The Gill-Man, though, was a child of the heavier gravity of Earth and was denser and harder than its rival. Though smaller, the Creature’s muscles were nearly a match for the Martian’s.  
The grappling monsters rocked and swayed until their fierce thrashings sent them tumbling down the steps. They slashed and bit at each other as they rolled over stone steps all the way down to the water. There was a loud splash as they hit the water and sunk like stones.  
Moments later, the Martian shot up out of the water screeching like fingernails on chalkboard.  
The skin on its face and chest was horribly burned. The flesh on its skull-like face was actually bubbling. Long streamers of liquescent flesh dribbled and streamed down its body. As it lurched up out of the water, stumbling up the stone staircase, the watching humans could see that its legs were eaten away almost to the bare bone.   
It dropped on the ground and crawled pitifully upwards, moaning in terrible pain.  
The others of its kind made no effort to help it. They shrank back and faded into their hiding places among the ruins.  
The Martian’s death rattle was horrible to hear, long moaning bass groans that rose into screechy squeals at the end. Its last sounds were bubbling pops as its lungs melted.  
The Martian horror was evolved to survive in its hellish native environment. In previous clashes with humans from Earth, the things had survived explosions, bullets, fire, radiation, toxic gases, and even electrical current the likes of which had destroyed alien visitors to Earth before Man had first encountered the skull-faced Martians. But no one had tried to attack one with something that was rare, almost unheard of, on its parched native world.   
Water.  
The Martian metabolism was evolved to maximize the smallest quantities of the rarest element on Mars. Liquid water. Exposed to large amounts, the super permeable membranes of the Martians’ cells dissolved as if soaked with battery acid. Mankind could have fought off the terrible monsters it had encountered in the earliest days of manned flight to Mars…with a squirt gun!  
The Gill-Man rose with a ferocious bellow of triumph.  
There was a terrible bite wound across its face and the top of its head. Deep holes punched by the Martian’s hollow fangs riddled its gray-green skin.  
The Creature shook its head.  
Blood drops showered all around it.  
It leaned forward, arms held wide, face and chest thrust out angrily. Nothing Martian met its challenge.  
Undisputed, the Creature shuffled to where Gale Barton lie supine, sprawled helplessly below it.  
It stared down for a few seconds, then scooped the woman up in its arms, turned, and stumbled back down to the water’s edge.  
Gale did not scream or resist.  
She had fainted.

Joe and Dr. Corbin had a long nervous wait after the Creature and its curvaceous burden disappeared beneath the surface of the water.  
Joe looked at his control pad, but the Creature’s cameras had been dislodged or damaged in the fight. There was nothing on the screens but static.  
Finally, bubbles rose near the deck of the module. The water bulged upwards, then the Creature came leaping out of the water. It landed flat-footed on the plastic deck, which cracked under the weight of the impact.  
Gale was draped limply in its arms. Her bubble helm was intact, her oxy-feed active. She was unconscious but breathing.  
The Creature dumped her contemptuously on the deck and glowered at Joe. There was anger in its flat solid-black eyes.  
It scrabbled at the wires encircling its neck. Its mouth gaped open then snapped shut petulantly.  
Joe Ferguson knew the Creature better than anyone who had ever lived.  
He instinctively understood what the Gill-Man was demanding.  
Reluctantly he found he had to agree.  
He jabbed in the release sequence, then flipped a switch.  
There was a snap, then the mesh of electrical wires fell loose and clattering on the deck.  
The Creature rubbed at its neck, then looked down at Joe. Ferguson sighed and tossed the control pad overboard. It sank in the dark waters, a rippling white rectangle that was visible much longer than Joe expected. Long enough for the first pangs of doubt to flare up.  
The Creature chuffed and rolled its head around on its shoulders.  
With no protection against it if it should attack, Joe stood very, very still, head down, shoulders bunched.  
The Creature took a step sideways, dropping into the water with a huge white splash.

A pale sun shone in the salmon-colored sky. There were white clouds, thin wispy scrapes on the face of heaven.  
The Mariner 17 hydro-survey module chugged down the Tithonium Chasma, a small plastic pill almost lost beneath the towering red cliffs, a dark spot on the glittering sun-speckled surface of a reborn Martian river.  
Gale Barton was at the controls. The young woman now had a streak of gray hair shooting through her honey-blonde hair. Her face was serious, sad, but not grim. She seemed secretly, subtly content with her experiences.  
Joe refrained from making any “woman driver” jokes and left her to her thoughts and her piloting.  
Dr. Corbin chatted excitedly, even though there was no one left to listen to him.  
Joe sat crouched on the bow of the modules fold out deck, staring into the rippling waters.  
Ahead of the module, riding the bow wave it made plowing through the water, was a dark graceful humanoid shape.  
They traveled together, willingly, eyes drinking in the wonders around them.  
They were all Aliens, with a newly reborn world to explore!


End file.
